Why Women Rarely Rise to the Top: A Social Identity Model of Leader Prototypes.

Title of the conference

16th European Association of Work and Organizational Psychology

Author(s)

KleinlogelE. P., DennerleinT., DietzJ., GabarrotF.

Address

Münster, Germany

Publication state

Published

Issued date

05/2013

Peer-reviewed

Oui

Language

english

Abstract

PurposeWe propose a social identity model of leader prototypes to address why the maleness of leader prototypes is more pronounced among men than among women (e.g., Schein, 2001). Specifically, we argue that individuals project their ingroup prototype (e.g., a male prototype) onto a valued other category (e.g., leaders) (e.g., Wenzel, Mummendey, Weber, & Waldzus, 2003) in order to maintain a positive ingroup (e.g., gender) identity. We hypothesized that both women and men engage in ingroup projection of their gender prototype on their leader prototype, and we expected this effect to be stronger for men than women. We also investigated intelligence as a moderator of ingroup projection.MethodologyParticipants (276 students, University of Lausanne) assessed to what extent attributes on a list of gender traits were characteristic of a successful leader. We computed relative ingroup similarity scores (e.g., Waldzus & Mummendey, 2004) representing the difference between how characteristic ingroup traits are for a successful leader, and how characteristic outgroup traits are for a successful leader.ResultsResults showed that men engaged in ingroup projection while women engaged in outgroup projection, and that men engaged in ingroup projection to a greater extent. We also found a small, but positive effect of intelligence on ingroup projection among men.LimitationsThe use of a student sample might limit the external validity of our findings.ImplicationsOur findings contribute to research on the under-representation of women in managerial roles, and introduce intelligence as a predictor of ingroup projection.ValueOur study allows for a more fine-grained understanding of the cognitive representations of leaders of men and women.